The correct answer is: "People in the community fear becoming similarly shamed."
Indeed, Hester Prynne has been convicted of adultery because of giving birth to a child out of wedlock. This is not only considered a sin by the very religious and Puritan society of her time but a crime under their theocratic laws. Her Scarlett letter is a form of public shaming that completely ostracizes her from her society and most people scorn her for her sin.
The phrase that represented the belief used to justify westward expansion of America's borders in the 1800s is "Manifest Destiny" which was used widely.
Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide for centuries, but in the rural South, it was typically practiced by former slaves. With the southern economy in disarray after the abolition of slavery and the devastation of the Civil War, conflict arose during the Reconstruction era between many white landowners attempting to reestablish a labor force and freed blacks seeking economic independence and autonomy.
